Ben Goldacre’s Bad Science: Humanities Graduates as Pantomime Adversaries

Ben Goldacre of badscience.net has compiled some of his columns, with extended commentary, into a book with some combative and provocative claims and challenges (see standard preamble). Bad Science is overall a good, timely introduction to basic scientific principles but the derogatory remarks about humanities graduates may be enough to undermine Goldacre’s impact and preclude any epiphany. Richard Smith regrets the likely consequences of this faux-pas.

[Goldacre] sneers unattractively at “humanities graduates [who run the media] with little understanding of science, who wear their ignorance as a badge of honour.” To Goldacre “humanities graduate” is an insult, which seems silly when his broad mission is to encourage deeper understanding of complex issues. [Richard Smith's review of Bad Science for BMJ]

It’s not only “silly” for undercutting Goldacre’s “broad mission” but because the jibes about humanities graduates either needed to be explored more fully or presented as a parody, a modern-day Malleus Maleficarum with these media-savvy enemies of science cast as the witches: here, Goldacre’s facile and glib sentiments coalesce into clunky, adversarial pantomime figures. Goldacre’s superficiality precludes any exploration of whether his observations have any supporting evidence; if there is any evidence he doesn’t present it. Even if Goldacre’s observations could be confirmed, a curious reader might wonder how this came to be and whether it is a phenomenon that is local to the UK or present in other societies.

BBC Radio 4 broadcast a 2-part exploration of The New Two Cultures by neuroscientist and arts enthusiast Mark Lythgoe. The programme was particularly disappointing because the title, The New Two Cultures, hinted at an investigation as to whether demarcations between C.P. Snow’s Two Cultures might be breaking down or becoming more porous. It would have been enlightening to hear experts discuss the integration of technology into everyday life for most people in the UK and its mainstream role in general education: whether there is any indication of a transfer of understanding of the underlying science or principles.^(a)

Lythgoe’s Big Idea is that scientists and artists have different traits and think in different ways. Lythgoe reported that he had asked 2000 people in science and arts to take cognitive styles tests (irritatingly, he also refers to this as “brain types”). After analysing the results, he reports that scientists score higher on systemising and artists on empathising and these preferences were reflected in the subjects that people choose to study (eg, at one extreme of systematising, there is a cluster of people in engineering, physics, computing; at the extreme of empathising, this is populated more by linguists and classicists).

Lythgoe invited comment on his preferred explanation that innateness rather than cultural influences predispose people towards finding the study of science or arts easier (the people he interviewed did not agree with him and he sounded like a young child who had just learned that adults do not approve of shaving cats or spontaneous daubs of custard on the walls). Lythgoe’s attribution of responsibility to innateness has some surprising correspondences to the writings of William Hazlitt: On Personal Character (1821).^(b)

Unfortunately, Lythgoe did not provide a context for his espousal of innateness and the subject was not explored in a satisfactory or illuminating manner. Aside from frothy observations about clothing styles and the obligatory sighting of a black polo neck, there was no clear evidence of The New Two Cultures.^(c)

Goldacre doesn’t present a Big Idea to justify his assertions; the humanities graduates that he caricatures are no more fully fleshed-out than pantomime villains.

My basic hypothesis is this: the people who run the media are humanities graduates with little understanding of science, who wear their ignorance as a badge of honour. Secretly, deep down, perhaps they resent the fact that they have denied themselves access to the most significant developments in the history of Western thought from the past two hundred years… [pp 207-8, Bad Science]

That’s not entirely convincing as sufficient motivation for such moustache-twirling villainry. Goldacre presents this as a hypothesis but it reads more like his truthiness on this point. It may well be true, but, without any supporting exploration of what “people who run the media” signifies (eg, the editors/commissioners, the owners, the advertisers, the businesses or pressure groups who purchase advertising) and how many of them studied humanities, and whether or not they do disproportionately “wear their ignorance as a badge of honour”, none of this is helpful; it may even be a distraction from whatever forces of culture, education or other factors are contributing to the state of affairs that Goldacre deplores.

Neither Lythgoe nor Goldacre commented on whether over-specialisation of the educational system or the emphasis on testing, performance and School League Tables was forcing pupils into option-limiting choices at too early a stage; nor was there any mention of the difficulty in recruiting science teachers or the changes in the science curriculum. Neither of them presents an overview of any educational research that addresses these issues; neither offered an overview of changes in access to education or the impact of equal opportunities legislation (eg, it was legal to offer advertise different pay-scales for men and women for the same job which made higher education seem valueless in some areas;^(d) in some universities, there were quotas for some subjects such as medicine with the intake of women restricted to 10%; there are substantial changes in the social diversity of university students since 1950).

In 2007, Paul Bloom and Deena Skolnick Weisberg published: Childhood Origins of Adult Resistance to Science.

[W]e review evidence from developmental psychology suggesting that some resistance to scientific ideas is a human universal. This resistance stems from two general facts about children, one having to do with what they know and the other having to do with how they learn…

In some cases, there is such resistance to science education that it never entirely sticks, and foundational biases persist into adulthood…

The main reason why people resist certain scientific findings, then, is that many of these findings are unnatural and unintuitive. But this does not explain cultural differences in resistance to science…

[I]n some domains, including much of science, direct evaluation [of asserted information] is difficult or impossible. Few of us are qualified to assess claims about the merits of string theory, the role of mercury in the etiology of autism, or the existence of repressed memories. So rather than evaluating the asserted claim itself, we instead evaluate the claim’s source. If the source is deemed trustworthy, people will believe the claim, often without really understanding it…

These developmental data suggest that resistance to science will arise in children when scientific claims clash with early emerging, intuitive expectations. This resistance will persist through adulthood if the scientific claims are contested within a society, and it will be especially strong if there is a nonscientific alternative that is rooted in common sense and championed by people who are thought of as reliable and trustworthy.

It might not have fitted Goldacre’s scheme for his book to subject these or similar claims to robust scrutiny but it might have presented a more nuanced picture than scapegoating humanities graduates or suggesting that there is an agenda for sabotaging science or putting up conscious resistance to it.

For all of the power that Goldacre ascribes to humanities graduates, it seems that researchers in humanities and social sciences are frustrated that public policy is too frequently formulated or implemented without appropriate consultation with researchers in appropriate disciplines, and that their contributions remain unacknowledged and perhaps undervalued: Punching Our Weight: the Humanities and Social Sciences in Public Policy Making.

Humanities and social science research is making a significant contribution to public policy at present. These contributions are more extensive and wide-ranging than might at first be apparent. The big strategic questions facing society today mean that these contributions are likely to become even more important in the future. Nevertheless, there are a number of challenges that will have to be met if the UK is to make full use of the humanities and social sciences. [Section 4:1]

Humanities researchers reported that policy makers were often slow to invite them to join their networks, because policy makers often did not recognise the added value that expertise and insights from the humanities might bring to bear on the policy making process. [Section 6:1]

Perhaps it is an inevitable consequence of creating an uneasy hybrid of popular science, media criticism and social comment, but it seems odd that Goldacre is criticising others for failing to grasp the scientific method while failing to produce any evidence of an even-handed or systematic appraisal of some of his most important assertions (eg, the media power of humanities graduates and their wilful ignorance of science and hostility towards it). The intended readership might be responsive to Goldacre’s depiction of Chattering Class Intellectuals As Science Ineffectuals, but somehow, a fuller, more nuanced exploration as to the current state of the public understanding of science may turn out to be a little more complicated than that.

Notes

(a) Whether or not technology is recognised explicitly as such is a different question: so is the issue of whether or not proficiency in the use of a technology confers any insight or knowledge of the underlying principles or processes.

(b) Hazlitt.

No one ever changes his character from the time he is two years old; nay, I might say, from the time he is two hours old…The accession of knowledge, the pressure of circumstances, favourable or unfavourable, does little more than minister occasion to the first predisposing bias…

Features alone do not run in the blood; vices and virtues, genius and folly are transmitted through the same sure but unseen channel…Country cousins, who meet after they are grown up for the first time in London, often start at the likeness…shall see, almost before they exchange a word, their own thoughts (as it were) staring them in the face, the same ideas, feelings, opinions, passions, prejudices, likes and antipathies; the same turn of mind and sentiment…It is owing, not to circumstances, but to the force of kind, to the stuff of which our blood and humours are compounded being the same. Why should I and an old hair-brained uncle of mine fasten upon the same picture in a collection, and talk of it for years after, though one of no particular “mark or likelihood” in itself, but for something congenial in the look to our own humour and the way of seeing nature? [On Personal Character]

(c) Unfortunately, Lythgoe’s enthusiasm for Sci-Art was indulged at length in the second programme so there was no thorough-going exploration of The New Two Cultures: Lythgoe’s preference for innateness seemingly precluded any discussion as to whether the over-specialisation of the educational system was fixing pupils with choices at too early a stage in their lives or any educational research that addresses these issues. The programme contained lacklustre descriptions of various projects and a glancing reference to the fact that although there are many sponsored positions for Artists in Residence, there seem to be both cultural and logistic reasons for the paucity of Scientists in Residence. Sadly, depending on your sympathies, the extended discussion of Sci-Art lends weight to Goldacre’s disparaging comments about ‘outreach endeavours’.

The indulgent and well-financed ‘public engagement with science’ community has been worse than useless, because it too is obsessed with taking the message to everyone, rarely offering stimulating content to the people who are already interested. [pg 321, Bad Science]

(d) Carol Dyhouse.

Bright female school-leavers were more likely to be channelled into teacher training colleges than universities: shortages in teacher supply were a recurrent anxiety after the war. Careers advice was often experienced as farcical by women graduates in the 1950s and the media ran endless debates about whether a university education was a waste of money in the case of daughters. Women were marrying at ever younger ages – in many cases, shortly after leaving school.

All this only began to change in the late 1960s, with a real turning point around the early 1970s. The new universities of the 1960s, offering new kinds of curricula in the arts, particularly, proved especially attractive to women. Meanwhile the rise of ’second wave’ feminism fostered equality legislation and forced an end to some of the more discriminatory practices in higher education and the labour market. [Going to university: funding, costs, benefits]

Related Reading

Review of Bad Science by Ben Goldacre.

Tags: Bad Science, Ben Goldacre, enlightenment, humanities graduates, pseudoscience